Thursday, July 5, 2012

For Frank O'Hara, it couldn't have been easy growing up as the youngest in
the family - even if Jim was only a few minutes older.

There was no competing with their older sister, of course. Helen J. O'Hara
was the apple of her father's eye and could do no wrong - and she never did.
Not even the scandal that forced her to go into hiding could diminish her
standing with Chief O'Hara.

Frank's twin brother Jim was smart, but he had to work at it. He was a
stolid, determined young man, and to Frank's way of thinking, maybe a little too
grim. "It wouldn't hurt you to crack a smile now and again," he would often
complain to his twin. Frank believed that there would never be another example
of a guy just like himself being so close with a guy who was so emotionless and
lacking a sense of humor. It would probably take a couple hundred years for it
to ever happen again.....

Frank O'Hara considered himself just as smart as Helen, but unlike Jim, he
had no intention of working hard to obtain his goals. He wanted it fast and he
wanted it easy.

Just like his women. "Hey now!"

Frank managed to get accepted into Channing University, but that was mostly
due to his manipulation of his transcripts and his incredible resemblance to
another student, Tom Erasmus - he used pictures of Tom in civic undertakings to
pad out his extracurricular resume.

TOM ERASMUS*

(Unlike Frank, Tom was an over-achiever who
would one day run for the position of state's attorney. Dean Baker was proud of
Tom; Frank... not so much.)

During his sophomore year, Frank dropped out before Channing had the chance
to expel him - for dealing in stolen test answers and gambling on the school's
football games played against the Blue Mountain State Goats, the California
University Condors, and the Minnesota State Screaming Eagles.

By that point Frank knew the regimen of school life was not for him.
Instead he set his sights on a journalistic career like his cousin, Tim
O'Hara.

But again, he found reporting the news to be hard work and worst yet, it
was dull. More fun it would be to make up the news stories, so he went to work
where such talents would be appreciated - at the "National Inquisitor".

At the Inquisitor he created out of whole cloth stories about Alien Life
Forms, as well as reports on monster sightings in Canada's Possum Lake, among
many other fantastical "news" items.

People in the Possum Lake area

still remember the traumatic hysteria caused by

the "Possum Lake Monster" craze.

He came to the attention of Donald Stern,
the publisher of "The World Chronicle" and they tried to recruit him to work at
their paper. But when Frank discovered that their bizarre news stories were
real, it only meant that he'd be back to doing the drudgery of real reporting,
but with real monsters. And that was a little too dangerous to his way of
thinking.

Meanwhile, Frank sought out Tony Fleming, the American cousin in the
infamous Fleming-St. Clair family of confidence tricksters and convinced the
rogue to take him on as a pupil. Fleming saw a little bit of himself in Frank
and agreed to be his mentor, teaching him all the tricks of the trade.

By the late 1960's, Frank came to the attention of the US government. But
instead of becoming their target for his misdeeds, instead he was offered the
opportunity of a lifetime - the Republican party offered him the chance to come
work for the Nixon White House. It was felt that Frank's "talents" would come
in handy as they prepared for a run at a second term in office.

So Frank moved to the Nation's capital and devised many of the dirty tricks
which would soon enough become national headlines. But he always made sure that
there was no way it could be traced back to him. This is why the name of "Frank
O'Hara" never came up during the fallout from the Watergate scandal.

At least one good thing came out of his time spent in Washington - he met
his future wife (the first one), J.J. Drinkwater.....

Coming up next - "D.C. Follies"

SHOWS CITED:

'Adventures Of Superman'

'ALF'

'Batman'

'Beverly Hills, 90210'

"Blind Ambition"

'Blue Mountain State'

'Channing'

'The Chronicle'

'Coach'

'The Governor And J.J.'

'The Larry Sanders Show'

'My Favorite Martian'

'O'Hara U.S. Treasury'

'Psych'

'The Red Green Show'

'The Rogues'

'Star Trek'

BCnU!

* Most mentions of William Shatner in his one episode of 'Channing' only list him as Tom. But it looks - from the fleeting glimpse of the campaign signs in the YouTube clip - that his last name is Erasmus. Until proven wrong, I'm going to stick with that.

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Just An Old Cowhand On The TiVo Grande

As the Trickster once said, "Reality is boring, that's why I change it whenever I can."
I'm just "The Man Who Viewed Too Much", and "Inner Toob" is a blog exploring and celebrating the 'reality' of an alternate universe in which everything that ever happened on TV actually takes place.
Most of my theories about the TV Universe come from thinking inside the box and thus can't be proven. But I've never been one to shy away from a tall tale.....
Remember: "The more you watch, the more you've seen!"